Tag Archives: names

Last night I went to a RadioLablive show with my aunt, uncle, and H. The night started with mishap—apparently it’s the Beaujolais Nouveau Wine Festival, though you wouldn’t know it from looking at Maximillian’s website. Foiled plan, turned off cell-phones, freezing cold… I was cranky pants by the time we made it to our very loud but only solution bar. My whole plan of nice conversation with a glass of wine turned to shouting across at each other and only catching snippets that resulted in questions like Do you have any metal in your body and By kidnapping children, I mean she WANTED to kidnap a toddler.

RadioLab had just about the coolest dinosaur puppets I’ve ever seen, and the comedian who opened the whole thing was pretty funny. In general, I think the In The Dark show was a little better, but they didn’t fail to amaze with stories and facts and a little bit of Dino Dancing. I love how absolutely dorky the whole thing is. I think my favorite part, though, was the way they ended the piece about the death of the dinosaurs. Multiple screens, a live video collage and swelling orchestral rock music. It’s hard to replicate in words (as most music/experiential moments are), and I hope that’s part of the broadcast when they put up the podcast. I remember walking out sort of dazed by the ending of the show last time, and I sort of wish the dinosaur piece had been last and we’d left to that emotion, rather than where it ended with Reggie Watts. C’est la vie.

As we walked out we started talking about names. I love how many people I know have given themselves their names, and it reminded me of an essay I wrote that never actually made it to the blog about my fascination with middle names. There has been a recent spate of nicknames at my office, but I don’t ever seem to get one (that I know about at least). Am I too stuffy? I think I take myself far too seriously. The only nickname I’ve sort of had was Watson, but it was only because my friend lived on Baker Street in London for a while, and my name was only in response to his. Pet names don’t really stick either. Maybe some day. Anyway, here’s the essay, for your enjoyment.

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Maybe it started with the Broadway musical Cats. I can’t tell you how many times my sister and I listened to the cassette, but it was enough. If you aren’t familiar, there’s a song called “The Naming of Cats” in which the cats sing “But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,/And that is the name that you never will guess;/The name that no human research can discover–/But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess. “ There was power in this cat-name, and power in withholding it. To name something was to know it—and as I think about it, I find this idea reoccurring in the stories that swirled around my childhood. The NeverEnding Story ends in an act of naming. Malicious Rumplestiltskin is defeated when his name is called out and he stomps his way out of existence. The world is created as God names his creations. Mythology after mythology, names, and the knowing of names, is power.

My family has a duplicitous relationship with names. My mother’s brother is Howard, David, Dave, and Doobie. My cousin is Rami and Corrina. My aunt is named Sharon but goes my Louise. Another aunt shifted from Ann to Anna, and was at some point something so complex I can’t remember it now. In conversation names shifted while the subject remained the same. Corrina left the house and Rami boarded the train. Howard was coming to Christmas late and Doobie walks in halfway through dinner. One had to follow the subject, not the description. There is also mimicry—both my father and brother are Michael, though my brother has a David between first and last to differentiate. Strangely enough though, neither my sister nor I, nor my parents, had middle names. It is as if, with the exhaustion of keeping everyone else straight, ours remained simple. (My mother has since taken my stepfather’s last as her middle, and though she’s had it for years, it still hard for me to think of her as anything but her first and last name, written in her slanting script across the return address of envelopes.)

I used to feel envy towards the middle names that surrounded me. I even gave one to myself for my eighth grade graduation, to match my best friend’s initials. The name didn’t stick – it wasn’t mine, and I knew it. I can’t say when my envy shifted, but at some point my lack became an oddness that I am strangely proud of. My (non) middle name will always be unknowable. It’s like the riddle that asks “What kind of gun do you use to kill a pink elephant” and answers “Have you ever seen a pink elephant?”

This riddle is a one way street. I get to ask a question I can never answer for myself. Henry. Eric. Michael. William. Rene. Ryan. Robert. I learn middle names with a voracious appetite. Each name is a thrill not unlike a first kiss, and, like my kisses, this attention is predominately focused on men. I casually learn women’s names, but not with the same driven focus. I drill myself on names and it’s utterly masculine. I list them to myself, first, middle, last. Adam. Ian. I learn the stories of the middle name—what distant relative or folk hero his parents had in mind, how often the name is dusted off and worn. Some middle names fit while others are more uncomfortable and clumsy on my tongue. Patrick. Richard. Andrew. I try to remember them all, regardless.

I have yet to meet a man without three names, besides my father. I wonder what I will do when confronted with an equal void. An unsolvable x. Will we create our own names? Maybe. There’s something about an emptiness that asks to be filled.

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I’m headed out to Orcas Island for the annual Gorse Busting Fest, with some of the coolest and kindest people I know. We’ll work together, sweat together, eat together, and play endless rounds of Dominion. See you soon guys!

While my telling blows aimed off at illusory skies you made tea, today’s not at all imaginary Earl Grey. Which is the most magical thing of all, my today friend. Not making a big to-do, making tea.

Hélène Cixous The Book of Promethea

I’ve forgotten most of the French I knew, but I remember French class in high school with Miss Wub. I made a lot of chamomile tea and drank it from a plastic yellow mug with Emma. We had to choose “French names” and I remember happily slashing the accents over my chosen Thérèse on grammar quizzes. The next year I wanted to switch to Mona but it wasn’t a French-enough name, so I became Monique Thérèse.

Now I find myself reading translated French and wishing I could remember enough to read the original text. I also wonder what happened to Monique Thérèse. She was so young then, sipping her tea and juggling her bags and books, pink Doc Martens and an old army coat thrown over the chair, hair chopped and dyed, makeup too bright.

I’m reading the submissions for Moravian’s Lebensfeld Upper Writing competition, and so far they are all beautiful. The work might need editing, but they are so full of vulnerability and insecurity I can’t help but find them beautiful. I tried to explain it to a coworker, the pages strewn about me in the break room, but I ended up rambling about burnt sugar coatings. What I meant to describe with my metaphor: the golden sugar cage I made once for a cake. I dripped the candy over a bowl and let it harden, and the cage sat above a white lilly cake I made. At least, it was supposed to. I don’t think it worked as intended. But that’s what these stories are: latticed words that hover close above, touching down in places. Easily shattered.

I know that I’m not that far away from these students. Their work is beautiful to me because I can see all of the steps I took along the same paths, the ways I was terrified and self-delusional and egotistical and shy; the ways I still am all of those things.

Oh Monique Thérèse. If I could go back and tell you anything, I don’t know that I would. You have to make your mistakes, you have to write your terrible but heartfelt poems, you have to hurt and love and dance and laugh. And you have to forget French. I’m sorry, but I’m not at all. Enjoy your tea.